


Miles Apart

by Iantheforlornwriter



Category: ROTBTD - Fandom, jarida - Fandom, robtd
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Autumn, F/M, Fanfiction, Romance, break-up, cry fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 17:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2318270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iantheforlornwriter/pseuds/Iantheforlornwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and Merida's relationship has hit a rut. In fact, this is at least the 10th time since they last broke up. Deciding that the relationship won't last, Merida wants to break up with Jack. For good. *Jarida*</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miles Apart

Miles Apart

Autumn. That fateful season in which they both met. It seemed like so long ago, when everything was still great, happy and puppy love day after day. It was their honeymoon period, and now that she was reminiscing about that perfect moment in time, it seemed so implausible to be even thinking about that now. They could never go back to being that way. Never. They've tried, many times before, but it always ended up with the kicking out of either one of them and neither one of them ever talked about it later. Merida, would go to Rapunzel. Jack would go to Hiccup or occasionally Eugene but he wasn't really much help at all. How is it, that they became so distant? In her own personal opinion they just needed space. But that space had grown too large, and no matter how much effort they put in into narrowing the gap, that space, it only widens the more they try. And she was very keen to stop trying.

"Merida?" Merida lifted her head up from her carving after being called by name. Rapunzel noted that she'd been crying again, she notice the red-eyed veins that crept up her eyes, and the mucus infested nose she was trying to breath through.

"Yeah?" She answered deadpanned. She'd been void of emotion for the last week or so, always thinking about him, and their times they spent together. She just stared at her carving that she'd been trying to carve for the last hour or so, it was one of her weird hobbies which helped calm her down somehow. But today, she couldn't will even a vein of a muscle to move. She wanted to carve a wisp, a floating ball of light that was popular in irish-folklore was akin to a symbol of their relationship. She was given a wisp keychain by Jack after her mother had been mauled to death by a bear in a camping trip in the forest, which promptly explains her phobia of the beasts. She just couldn't will herself to carve one now. It reminded her too much of him.

"Merida, you can't keep on going on like this. End it. For real." Rapunzel of course knew that her advice was for nought. They'd always get back together somehow, and to be frank, just wasn't healthy for her anymore. It always ended in heartbreak, again. What happened to the free-spirited, headstrong girl that she used to know? She normally wouldn't get bogged down by something as feeble as a relationship crisis before, but now, since it's Jack, she's changed.

"How can I?" She asked. "He's more than just Jack."

This might not make sense to anyone else other than her closest friend and confidant; Rapunzel, but she knew what the red-haired girl was talking about of course. They'd been friends seem childhood, nothing could ever split them apart, but now? It seemed as though it was them themselves who were bringing each other apart.

"I know, but you can't keep on going on with your life this way. Merida, you wake up everyday thinking that you'd get back with him and if you do, you just end up like…" Rapunzel got up from the booth at which they were sitting and motion her hands, flaying in the air at her, continuing with; "this!"

Merida of course knew she was right, although she didn't want to accept it. It can't end, not like this. She had to try, just one more time. It couldn't hurt more than it already did, could it? She didn't know anymore, all she could do was wait and see where the world would take her, and Jack in the future. To be honest, she didn't even know if she even had a present with him, just as much as a future. She was beginning to doubt if their past even had meaning.

"Look, Punzel, I know. I do. But right now? I need to take matters into my own hand for once. I can't be the damsel in distress anymore. I'll talk to him. Alright?" Merida felt her throat swallow up itself and then spat it out again in a giant rut of a mess. The knot in her throat started to form, and it took great strength to hold back the tears. But she couldn't stop her voice from breaking. No matter how much she tried.

Rapunzel smiled. She was glad she saw the light. But she was worried that the light might implode on itself and be eaten up by darkness. And that, that light, that tiny, faintest of all lights, would journey through a tunnel where no light may shine in, and the last remnants of whatever dignity left that she held on to, that little glimmer, would disappear forever and leave her with nothing, waiting to be sucked into a black-hole and left with a vacuum of a life. Stranded, with nothing and her life made empty. But for now, she'd accept her explanation. For however and whatever much it's worth.

"So…are you just going to stare at that piece of wood or are you actually going to make something?" Rapunzel asked her in hopes of lightening the mood. She didn't. It felt as though a drought of gloom and grim had settled in the room.

"I…actually don't feel like making one right now. Hey listen, I've got to go. I have a tonne of homework to get done." She made an excuse to leave the cafe.

"Oh, yeah ok, sure. Hey, I'll see you later, ok?" Rapunzel asked her.

"Mmmhm." Was all that Merida replied, before she opened the cafe's door and walked out into the cool night air of autumn.

"Alright, so here you are again, passed out on the couch, and by the looks of it…" Eugene Fitzherbert paused for a second drawing out the image in his mind. There were bottles all over the floor, some full, some empty, some not even finished with a horrendous odour that danced in the air. It was horrible and Eugene of course knew what it meant. They did it again. Jack and Merida split up for the thousandth time. "drunk." He continued.

"Shut up, Rider." Jack had a pounding migraine, and he didn't need to be lectured again. Besides, he had a hell of a hangover. And what better way to cure it, if without aspirin, than to tease Eugene?

"Okay, seriously, you have to stop calling me that." Eugene ruffled the hair on the back of his head frustrated that Flynn Rider is still be making fun of. He wanted to impress Rapunzel and the persona of Flynn Rider was born. He wished now that he never came up with the name, and now he wished he never even used it. Now Jack and Hiccup won't shut up about it.

"No." Jack replied matter-of-factly waving a dismissive hand in the air as a sign to shoo Eugene away.

"Ok, come on now, stop giving me the cold shoulder here, get up, stop moping around."

"Just leave me alone Rider." The contents of his speech was muffled from the pillow he was now resting his face on.

"Oh for god's sake. Would you like some cheese with all that whine?" he retorted.

"Fu-"

"Okay, guys I've got pizza." Hiccup entered the messy, slob, clothes infested room carrying three boxes of pizza stacked on top one another, interrupting the swear he was about to deliver to Eugene.

"Ooh, cheesy goodness. Lay it on me." Eugene got up, totally unaware of the insult he was about to receive.

"Guys, really you didn't have to do all this." Jack got up, his face in a complete mess of drool, mucus, and alcohol stains on his blue hoodie.

"Oh, it's pretty much standard now. Moping on the couch? Check. The oh so horrible stench of alcohol? Check. Oh, oh pizza? Check." Eugene replied.

Jack stared at him with eyes that could kill, his look cold. Eugene raised up both arms into the air.

"I surrender."

Jack rolled his eyes and started chowing down on the pizza that Hiccup had brought into the room, continuing to talk while he ate. "What's that supposed to mean anyway?"

"Well, you broke up with Merida for like the umpteenth time, and-"

Jack gave him another one of his death stare making Eugene stop dead in his tracks.

"What Eugene means is that, it happens so often that, you know, we, kind of, expect it already?" Hiccup intervened trying to calm down the ongoing conflict between them but all he did was upset him more with his signature babbling.

"That doesn't help." Jack got up from the couch, proceeding to the door. "When you guys want to really talk, without any condescending nature involved, then call me."

"Oh come on! We were just-" Eugene tried talking but was cut off.

"When you're ready, call me." Jack interrupted, leaving the room through the already broken wooden door, slamming it behind him, barely staying hinged to the rusty-brown coloured metal hinges.

Hiccup looked at Eugene obviously blaming him for the sudden outburst.

"What? I guess he just didn't know Jack." Eugene shrugged, hoping that Hiccup would get his pun sooner or later. He did. He wasn't impressed.

"Shut up, Flynn."

"Seriously, you have, really have to, stop calling me that." Tough crowd, he said under his breath.

"Sure thing, Rider."

"That doesn't help." Eugene looked towards the door, his gaze laid upon the knob which was just about ready to fall out of the small circular hole and the door which edges are already falling off from the hinges. He really needs to get a new apartment, he thought.

Jack took comfort in the cold. He didn't really know why, but he did. If he ever felt like he was lost in the world, or he could no longer withstand the stress one might get from the feud of a relationship and the examinations of college he would always find solace in the cold air. The air that prickled his skin like thin sheets of ice, the air that made his hair on his arms stand on ends and gave him goosebumps. He was fond of the cold. That's how he got his nickname; Frost. But no one had called him that for a while now. It meant something other than what he was used to be called in the earlier days. It had fond memories of Merida. And he was keen, very keen, to end the relationship. But something was stopping him from doing it. It was ironically, Merida.

She was the very problem that he was having. The dilemma he was facing, but for some reason, she was also the reason he was still breathing in the world. He knew, at the moment that train of thought had crossed his mind, found it cliched. The girl of his dreams? He snorted with how stupid he had come to that reasoning. But wasn't it true in some way? Merida was the reason. For happiness, and for sorrow.

The nights were getting colder now. Autumn is almost over. Winter would be arriving around the corner any moment now. Once he would feel great pleasure in having the snow bury the town with it's cold white blanket. He didn't feel it as much now though.

That's when, in his deep train of thought, he ran into someone, getting an unfh from him or her. He apologised, and looked down to where he had collided with the stranger. Then he realised the person he banged into had red, curly hair. And then he realised, it was Merida.

"Merida?"

She also noticed it was him, she was still stifling her tears from her recent meeting with Rapunzel. She did not want to let him see her cry. Not one bit.

"Jack." She said, deadpanned.

"I, uh, fancy meeting you here."

"Yeah." She said again deadpanned.

Merida worked up the courage to tell him what was bothering her all this while. The same talk she had with Rapunzel. She didn't think she would be able to even initiate this conversation she would now be having with her on and off boyfriend, but she was ready. She had to. And she will.

"Jack."

"Yeah?" He asked her, hopeful that they'd get back together again. He knew he'd be better off without her. But, he needed her. It was Merida. They were never separated long. They'd always get back together. Sooner or later. However, Merida had other ideas. Ones that he wasn't all that ardent about.

"We have to.." She gasped in air as she felt her throat tightened.

"We have to what?"

"We have to end this."

Jack felt his heart sink. It sank lower. It sank so low, it put the titanic to shame.

"Why?"

"You know it's wrong" she told him.

"Nothing is wrong with this!" He exclaimed, a little louder then he had intended to.

"It is!" She yelled back, on the verge of defeat, of breaking down and sobbing in an uncontrollable mess. She held back the waterfalls, as much as she could. She wasn't very sure how long she could.

"We've broken off a thousand times, we fix it a thousand times. It's not working. We're hurting ourselves more, Jack." She said.

Jack ruffled his hair in agitation, looking off into the far distance in a split second, hoping that some stranger would come up to them and patch them both up. that they could get back together and have that three months of honeymoon-like period before breaking off again. It was all for nought. She was serious this time.

"Yes, and we do it again."

"For how long Jack? How long!"

"As long as it takes!"

It's never going to happen, Jack. It never will."

"Don't say that."

"It's true. And you know it."

Jack of course knew this was true. They had broken off for a thousand times and gotten back together for a thousand times. He had hoped, deep within his heart, that somehow, for some miracle to happen, that the thousand and one time would be their lucky number. The charm. They'd get back together and never have another falling out. He wanted to see it through. But he knew it hurt them more than anything else. But he was too afraid to end it. He didn't want to end it. Even if he knew he must. That they should. He didn't want to.

"It's hurting us more than we realise, Jack. We have to. For real this time."

"It's not time off?"

"No, we tried that. Not even personal space would work anymore, Jack." She let out an exasperated sigh. She didn't want to say it out loud. It was too hurtful to say. But she had to.

"It's over, Jack. It's over."

She walked off before he could reply her, and she was already too far gone, to far away from his reach to stretch out and grabbed her by her arm. Anything to stop her from walking away.

She was already crying by the time she set two feet away from him. It was difficult for her. Difficult for the both of them.

Jack always took solace in the cold. He always felt secure, safe whenever it was chilly. There was a sudden drop in temperature. Jack looked around him and noticed white dust falling from the sky. He then realised it was snow. It was cold now, and Jack's breathing left a fresh breath of water vapour behind its wake. The snowflakes started to form. Jack always took solace in the cold. But not this time. This time he couldn't find solace in it. There was no peace in the cold. There was nothing to warm him. There was no Merida, no fire. There was only the chill of winter. Nothing more, but ice.


End file.
